17 Indian Startups Making News This Week (09 January – 15 January)

16/01/2017

Consumer Internet Industry

1) Freecharge Founded by Sandeep Tandon and Kunal Shah: Digital payments solution, Freecharge, has raised $57 million in its private equity round of funding to further scale its technological products and operations. These funds have been poured in by Snapdeal’s parent company Jasper Infotech and add up to its ongoing efforts of raising fresh capital for its funds.

2) TicketNew Founded by N Ramkumar, V Sasi Raman and Ravishankar Ramanujalu: Alibaba Pictures, the entertainment unit of e-commerce major Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, may buy Chennai-based Orbgen Technologies Pvt Ltd, which runs online events booking portal TicketNew. The value of the transaction is expected to be around $35 million for a 70-75% equity stake.

3) Loan Frame Founded by Shailesh Jacob, Rishi Arya and Akshun Gulati: Small and medium enterprise-focused online lending platform Loan Frame Technologies raised $2.25 million in an angel round of funding led by Parag Saxena, co-founder of Vedanta Capital. The company plans to use the funds for platform development and hiring new people.

4) InstaOffice Founded by Vikas Lakhani: Business centres and coworking space provider InstaOffice, raised an undisclosed amount of Pre-Series A funding from Globevestor. Zishaan Hayath (co-founder Toppr); Karan Chellani (Managing Partner at SQUE Capital) and Mohit Satyan (Director DFM Foods and Chairman Teamwork Arts), along with a cluster of other industry experts and angel investors also participated in this round. It targets to grow to over 1,000 active members by the next quarter.

5) iService Founded by Ankit Chowdhary: Bengaluru-based gadgets repair firm iService has raised $439K in an angel round of funding from Blume Ventures. Angel investors such as Freshdesk Co-founder Girish Mathrubootham, TaxiForSure Co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna, Tapzo CEO Ankur Singla, Former Flipkart executive Mekin Maheshwari and Belong Co-founder Vijay Sharma also participated in this round. The raised funds will be deployed for improving product/tech, team building, and expanding the network to more cities, with an aim of reaching to 6 cities by year end. The startup is currently active in Bengaluru and Delhi.

6) PaisaWapas Founded by Shankar Kotuli: Bengaluru-based deal discovery and cashback portal PaisaWapas raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Vividhity Ventures, a group of IIT (BHU), Varanasi alumni and a few executives from Infosys and Dell. The funds will be utilized for increasing team strength, expanding college network to over 200 colleges, marketing and partnering with various players working in the education space.

7) Roambee Founded by Vidya Subramanian and Sanjay Sharma: Silicon Valley, US and Mumbai-based IoT Company Roambee raised $3.1 million funding from Deutsche Telekom Strategic Investments. Also, it partnered with Deutsche Telekom’s corporate customer arm, T-Systems to offer a real-time visibility solution for goods and assets in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Together, paying an “on-demand” pay-per-use business model, the two companies are delivering an end-to-end solution featuring real-time visibility, tracking, and condition monitoring of shipments and assets in-transit and in-field.

Technology Industry

9) IntelligenceNODE Founded by Sanjeev Sularia: Mumbai-based big data analytics startup, IntelligenceNODE raised $733K from NBFC firm BlackSoil Capital. This is the company’s third disclosed round to date. The team is also financed by investors such as Gaurav Sharma, Sunil Varrier, Arindam Das, Anupam Mittal and Gul Mukhey.

10) Securens Systems Founded by Sunil Ramanna Udupa: Mumbai-based e-security startup Securens Systems Pvt. Ltd raised $5 million in its private equity round of funding led by Trifecta Capital. Existing investor Mayfield India also participated in the current funding round. The raised funds will be utilized to increase its client-base.

11) SecureAX Founded by Prasanna Kotha, Deepak N Belavadi, and Praveen Gongireddy: Biometric and surveillance solutions provider SecurAX raised an undisclosed amount of funding. The investment was from Axilor, Parampara Early Stage Opportunities Fund and a group of angel investors. The startup will utilize the funds to boost technology offerings, expand customer base and scale up its operations across India and the Middle East.

12) Hansel.io Founded by Varun Ramamurthy Dinakar, Parminder Singh, and Mudit Krishna Mathur: Real-time mobile app management platform, Hansel.io raised $1.35 million from IDG Ventures. Existing investors Endiya Partners also participated in the current round of funding. The raised funds will be utilized towards the development of cross-platform capabilities, hiring and expanding its presence in the North American market.

13) Supercraft3D Founded byMaltesh Somasekharappa: Flipkart founder Binny Bansal financed in a 3D Printing startup Supercraft3D, pouring in $1 million into the company. Four other undisclosed angel investors also participated in the funding round. This is Flipkart’s fifth investment in the healthcare space.

Healthcare Industry

14) Medinfi Founded by Ravi Shankar Mishra and Himani Mishra: Bengaluru-based healthcare startup Medinfi raised $100K from a group of angel investors including Vinod Martin, chief operating officer of a Singapore-based IT services company; Singapore angel investor Evan Lim; Kanchan Ghoshal, a Qatar-based alumnus of management school XLRI; and Ram Kumar Kakani, a professor at XLRI. The company will deploy the funding to expand its user base to 50 cities in India.

Education Industry

15) Unacademy Founded by Sachin Gupta and Gaurav Munjal: Bengaluru-based edtech startup Unacademy secured $4.5 million funding in Series A round from Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. Girish Mathrubootham, CEO, Freshdesk and Ananth Narayanan, CEO, Myntra, along with Stanford Angels have also participated in the round. The company plans to deploy the raised funds for expansion of its content portfolio; growing its educators base from 200 to 2000 in the next one year, across varied exam preparation, professional growth topics and language learning; and in including content from areas such as personal finance, personality development and more.

Real Estate Industry

16) Square Yards Founded by Tanuj Shori: Real estate portal Square Yards received $10 million from its banks. The funding is from a group of high net worth individuals including global beauty brand L’Occitane CEO Andre Hoffman and the family office of Kanpur-based Lohia Group. It is now aiming double-digit market share in Indian real estate distribution and is planning to expand to 25+ countries on the ground advising on global real estate.

Automobile Industry

17) Drivekool Founded by Mahesh Gidwani, Saumitra Kayal, Kumar Gaurav: An online marketplace for driving schools, Drivekool, raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding from US-based Aavya Ventures. The company plans to spend the money in expanding operations to new cities in Maharashtra.

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